Piero Fornasetti

For Fornasetti the legacy of the great Italian tradition lay precisely in drawing, in the daily practice of sketching and copying. Rigour and simplicity of style were the fundamental antidote against the narcissism of the end of the 19th century that he detested. The design of objects, therefore, represents only one stage of his artistic journey.

In 2016, the first 100 illustrations from the series were collected in a prestigious, completely handmade, limited edition volume. During the same year, the series made its entrance to the world of theatre, becoming part of the set of "Don Giovanni", the Mozart opera presented and produced by Fornasetti.

"The European" no. 6 - December 2007 - special issue for Triennale Design Museum - RCS Periodici spa Fornasetti, designer de la fantaisie, Patrick Mauriès, Thames & Hudson, 2006 Fornasetti: The Complete Universe, by Mariuccia Casadio, Barnaba Fornasetti and Andrea Branzi, Rizzoli, 2010, ISBN 0847835340

In 1984 the "Themes & Variations" gallery opened in London, on the initiative of Liliane Fawcett and Giuliana Medda, which also revived interest in Fornasetti's work overseas, where he was already known. His oeuvre began to be rediscovered beyond the ideological contrasts of form/function and ornament/utility, and in 1987 Piero collaborated with Patrick Mauriés on the first monograph of his work, accompanied by an introduction by Ettore Sottsass. The book was published posthumously - Piero Fornasetti died in 1988 during a minor operation in hospital. After Piero's death in October 1988, his son Barnaba Fornasetti kept a part of his father's activity going.

In the early Thirties, Piero began a phase of studying engraving and printing techniques. This constant practice allowed him to work with various artists of the time, printing artist's books and lithographs for them. From Alberto Savinio to Fabrizio Clerici, by way of Giorgio de Chirico, Massimo Campigli, Lucio Fontana, Michele Cascella, Eugene Berman, Raffaele Carrieri and Carlo Bo: the Fornasetti Art Printshop became a benchmark for many artists of his generation. "He was the first to print De Chirico lithographs in Milan, some considerable time ago", wrote Raffaele Carrieri in Epoca in 1978.

In this same period, Piero succeeded in shaping the conceptual side of his approach. In the Seventies he opened a space that offered him a way of giving continuity to his work with other instruments: in 1970, together with a group of friends, he ran the Galleria dei Bibliofili, where he exhibited both his own work and that of contemporary artists. Piero began drawing again. The figures, heads, faces, and bodies made of bottles or fruits remained to herald his new pictorial style, alongside abstract compositions that highlighted an unexpected fascination for layers, interactions of colour and different techniques.

Over the same period, in parallel with the development of his personal iconography applied to everyday objects, Fornasetti's artistic evolution progressed. 1958 saw the creation of "Stanza metafisica" ("Metaphysical Room"), a work composed of thirty-two hinged, wheelless doors, designed to form a congenial space for meditation, an early example of an artistic installation, first presented at the exhibition at the Tea Centre in London.

In 1952 Piero began working on what would later become his most famous and iconic series: "Tema e Variazioni". Starting from a portrait of a woman seen in a magazine from the late nineteenth century, he began a representational study that would accompany him throughout his life. The subject was the face of Lina Cavalieri, an opera singer who lived at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries and who was celebrated as the most beautiful woman in the world. At that time, Lina Cavalieri represented an archetype of enigmatic, classical beauty that Fornasetti reinterpreted by means of over 400 "variations". Alluring, mysterious, amazed, seductive, with a mustache, glasses, crown or balaclava: over time the face of Lina Cavalieri became the emblem of Fornasetti and his art. Thus was born the “Tema e Variazioni” series, which continues today to be reproduced today by his son Barnaba Fornasetti on a series of everyday objects, not only porcelain, but also furniture and accessories, in new variations. The series has won over a large audience of writers and intellectuals: Alberto Moravia dedicated a text to the infinite variations of Lina Cavalieri's face, while in 1971 Henry Miller chose one of the decorations of the series on the cover of his autobiography "My Life and Times".

At the beginning of those years the couple designed and decorated the "Architettura" trumeau, exhibited at the IX Triennale in 1951 and then auctioned in 1998 at Christie's for fifteen thousand dollars. A second original from 1951 is currently on display at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. The "Architettura" trumeau aims to represent the interaction of modern and ancient, rationalism and the Renaissance, architecture and furniture, structure and decoration, and over time has become one of the icons of Fornasetti's work during the interwar years and the economic boom.

Contrasting unused rooms and traditional houses with the reduced living spaces of the modern age, the two furnished and decorated the Sanremo Casino (1950), an entire apartment that became famous as a symbol of their style, the private home Casa Lucano (1951), and the first-class cabins and lounges of ocean liners such as the Andrea Doria (1952).

Called up on the outbreak of war, Piero initially managed to stay in Milan by procuring the job of decorating the Sant'Ambrogio barracks. Later, in 1943, he took refuge in Switzerland, where he continued his artistic research and produced posters and lithographs for theatrical events and magazines. This period represented an unprecedented opportunity for him, during which he created oil portraits, watercolours, drawings in Indian ink, ink and ballpoint pen, devoting himself to the study of the human body, which he would later draw on in his production of decorative graphic arts. During the same period he created the sets and some promotional materials for Albert Camus' Caligula directed by Giorgio Strehler.

In the 1940s in Milan Fornasetti founded the design and decorative arts atelier that bears his name, Fornasetti, which, under the artistic direction of his son Barnaba Fornasetti, has become known throughout the world. One decisive factor in starting this activity was meeting Gio Ponti, who pushed him to develop his intuition: to produce everyday objects enriched by the kind of decoration that would bring art into ordinary people's homes. This was the origin of the Fornasetti atelier, an example of the principle of "practical madness", where creativity is in perfect harmony with the utility of the object. Then as now, porcelain items, furniture and furnishing accessories represented the heart of Fornasetti's production.

Through constant experimentation in the field of printing, Fornasetti was able to obtain unique graphic effects on silk scarves. In 1940 he proposed a series of them at the VII Triennale di Milano, which was rejected because it was off-topic. The proposal, however, earned him the attention of Gio Ponti, with whom years later he would enter into a very close creative partnership. The two of them were aligned not only on the definition and importance of decoration and the cultural heritage that it implies, but also on the whole notion of architecture, the relationship between man and his environment.

Thanks to the experience he had acquired and his passion for printing, from the 1940s onwards Piero created a series of limited edition graphic works. Calendars, gifts, advertising images, theatre programs, posters and magazine covers. Editorial concepts designed and produced on commission or for pleasure, expressing in various forms his conception of formal elegance and his vision of the world.

In this period (along with Filiberto Sbardella, Aligi Sassu, and others) he produced various sketches and drawings for the Esino Lario School of Tapestries. From 1939 he began to publish his works in the design and architecture magazine Domus, edited at the time by Gio Ponti. From 1940 to 1942 he designed almanacs on the commission of Gio Ponti himself. The first three almanacs, small publications designed and printed using previously unpublished themes, which started life as Christmas gifts, would inspire a longer series beginning immediately after the war and ending in 1950.

Together with his penchant for drawing, Fornasetti also soon revealed his tough, determined character, demonstrating his resolve to pursue his aspiration. In 1932 he enrolled at the Brera Academy but was expelled two years later for insubordination. He then moved on to the Higher School of Applied Arts in Industry at the Castello Sforzesco, also in Milan, where he completed his schooling.

Piero Fornasetti (Milan, 10 November 1913 - Milan, 15 October 1988) was an Italian artist and designer.

Piero Fornasetti was born in 1913 into a well-off. middle-class family in Milan. A multifaceted figure in the Italian art scene of the twentieth century, Fornasetti was active as a designer, decorator, painter, curator and printer. His works - produced in series but in limited numbers - characterise his eclecticism within the Italian culture of design. During his artistic career, he created over 13,000 works, including a vast production of 20th century objects and furniture, especially in terms of diversity of decorations. Art critic and collector Patrick Mauriès said: